Social media ad spend surpasses TV

It isn’t surprising that Facebook dominated ad revenue in 2016, taking in 67.9 per cent of social media advertising spend. It was a rosy picture all round, with social media ad spend doubling worldwide over the past two years – rising from $16bn in 2014 to $31bn in 2016. Instagram is on track to generate $1.53 billion in mobile ad revenue worldwide in 2016. That’s an impressive year-on-year increase of 144 per cent.

Perhaps most significantly, though, it was predicted that digital ad spend in the U.S. would have surpassed television spend for the first time ever by the end of 2016.

Snapchat hits 10 billion daily video views

A Cisco study predicted that mobile video traffic will account for 75 per cent of total mobile data traffic by 2020. Video is arguably the future of social media and, according to the Social Media Marketing Industry Report 2016, 73 per cent of marketers plan on increasing their use of video in 2017, and 50 per cent plan on using live video in their marketing.

But how many will incorporate Snapchat into their video strategy? Data released last April revealed that users of the app were watching 10 billion videos per day. That figure had grown from 8 billion in just two months, and will likely continue growing as we move into 2017. Any brands continuing to omit Snapchat from their marketing strategy should make 2017 the year they get involved.

LinkedIn to send Microsoft over $1 trillion line

With its acquisition of LinkedIn, analysts predict that Microsoft will become the first tech company to reach a market value of $1 trillion.

But what does it mean for LinkedIn? All we know so far is that LinkedIn notifications will be flagged up in the Action Center under Windows, while Enterprise LinkedIn Lookup (which lets members of large firms look up co-workers more easily) will be powered by Active Directory and Office 365. Microsoft will also be developing a ‘business news desk’ across its ecosystem and MSN.com.

Twitter hits 313m users but growth stalls

Twitter didn’t enjoy the best of times in 2016, with monthly active user numbers stagnating after years of solid growth. Some have put the decline down to trolls, while eMarketer has attributed it to the rising popularity of Snapchat, Instagram and messaging apps.

But it need not be all doom and gloom. Analyst Oscar Orozco believes Twitter’s salvation lies in live video streaming, saying: “It has had success with live broadcasting and should continue to make deals to stream sports and political events. By continuing to invest in video, particularly live video, Twitter could potentially begin to more successfully monetize and grow its user base.”

There are 33,000 chatbots on Facebook

People have been chatting to computers for years, but 2016 will be remembered as the year it became commonplace. Chatbots have taken off big time and 2017 has been tipped to be the year they move into mass adoption. As of last September there were 33,000 of them on Facebook Messenger. This growth is reflected in the increasing popularity of messaging apps, which are growing faster than social networks and fueling the rise of chatbots in the process.

Almost two thirds of Whatsapp users are online more than once daily

According to stats produced by GlobalWebIndex, Whatsapp is the most frequently used social platform – with 58% of its users online more than once a day. The annual subscription fee was ditched when Facebook took over, but 2017 will see big strides in Whatsapp marketing. New T&Cs released back in August revealed that Whatsapp is exploring ways for users and businesses to ‘communicate with each other’ via the app. This is expected to be restricted to useful information such as airlines sending users updates to their flight status, and retailers pinging customers a receipt following a purchase.

Instagram adds 100m users in six months

Instagram certainly had a busy year in 2016. The Facebook-owned photo app unveiled a whole host of new features, including Business Pages, Stories, Drafts, live video, URL links, updated safety tools and even a unified inbox with Facebook. All that progress tempted 100 million new users into downloading the app to join the 500 million already on board. The last time Instagram added 100 million users it took nine months – this time they did it in six.

Snapchat revenue to close in on $1b

There’s a whole host of stats that could illustrate just how popular Snapchat is right now. Not least the fact that its users post 9,000 snaps per second (that’s 777,600,000 snaps per day). But perhaps most significant has been the startling increase in ad revenue.

The app generated $366.69 million in ad revenues worldwide in 2016, an increase of 519 per cent from 2015. That figure is projected to hit $935.46 million in 2017. But what’s behind this eye-catching increase? “Advertisers are attracted to Snapchat for its broad reach among young millennials and those in Generation Z, which are valuable demographic groups for many businesses,” said eMarketer principal analyst Cathy Boyle.